


Fieldwork

by down



Series: Unsubtle Espionage [2]
Category: Magic Knight Rayearth
Genre: F/M, Spy!AU, only not enough to add the fandom, technically a man from U.N.C.L.E. fusion
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-08
Updated: 2014-09-08
Packaged: 2018-02-16 16:32:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2276763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/down/pseuds/down
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clef's phone wakes him up. That's never good - especially not when it's Umi calling. (Not that he won't go help her out of whatever hot water she's landed in this time...)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fieldwork

**Author's Note:**

> SPY AU because. Milieva sent me burn notice. And I could. And this isn't at all a man from U.N.C.L.E. modern-day fusion nope~
> 
> Originally written for fan-flashworks challenge 'hot water' - and will probably be added to in bits and pieces as time goes on, but there aren't any cliffhangers or anything? (Set as teen because it's a spy au, there's going to be some mild violence. Probably about the same level as you'd find in the Man from U.N.C.L.E., in fact...)

The shrill ring of his phone shattered Clef’s sleep. He jolted awake, but didn’t switch the light on as he reached for the bedside table; he had no need to, as the thin curtains on his windows only diluted the eternal blazing of the pachinko parlour opposite and the electric-blue light of the sign on the love-hotel just down the road. Tokyo was impossible to shut out or repress, so he let it work for him – especially when something was wrong. 

And something had to be, for that phone to ring in the middle of the night. Something had to be very wrong indeed. That being so, it was best if whoever was watching his apartment tonight didn’t realise he was up. Or so said too many years of fieldwork. 

(The assumption that there was always someone watching his apartment… well. That just came with the field he worked in.)

Clef had two phones – neither a landline. Wires were painfully easy to hack. Mobile signals weren’t particularly secure either, in the end, but at least you needed more than a pair of pliers and some wire to break into them. The first was his work phone. A month ago, it would still have been on, even at – close to one in the morning. Then he made the sleepy mistake of letting an email or two send read-receipts back to his boss without thinking about the timestamps on them, and now she was monitoring his phone and his computer to make sure he actually slept. He had pointed out this didn’t actually stop him having bouts of insomnia, it just meant he was less useful while he was _having_ them, but Emeraude seemed convinced that the temptation of just getting on with a little more work – just one or two emails – was a slippery slope into him forgetting to try to sleep again, and so he was better off just watching the tv or reading a book like the rest of them. 

The other phone would have been his personal phone, if he had any life outside the agency. As he didn’t, it was wholly there so he could be contacted in emergencies, and there were perhaps ten people who knew the number for it. The few times it had rung in the past year had been Emeraude, calling him in because something had kicked off and they needed him at HQ. 

This time, it wasn’t. 

“Hello?” 

“Clef, hi, hope I didn’t wake you! I’ve got a favour I need to ask.”

“…Umi.” He flopped back onto his pillow, and was very glad he’d lit no tell-tale lights; there was no way this call wasn’t going to end in trouble. And inconvenience. And quite possibly his being persuaded to hack another agency when he really really knew better. “Blast it, Umi, what are you-“ 

The sounds in the background of the phonecall started to filter in: laughter, music, glasses clinking – or possibly bottles. None of which would sound out of place, had he not known that Umi was currently taking painkillers which did _not_ mix well with alcohol, and her two best friends, the only people who could have persuaded her to a pub at this time of night while she couldn’t drink anything, were something over a thousand miles north on assignment. 

“What are you _doing_?” He asked, and was rolling out of bed already, looking for the clothes he’d abandoned on a chair far too recently. “You aren’t cleared for fieldwork, Umi, what are you up to?!” 

Normally there would have been some form of protest at this point. Instead, Umi just spoke, voice flat. “There’s a problem at work. Needs a plumber. Or our friends aren’t going to be able to come back home on schedule. I… want to sort it out tonight, before the situation gets worse.” 

Clef paused with his trousers half-way on, part of him wanting to protest that leaky plumbing was barely even code – most of him screeching to a halt at the thought of a leak at work. If someone was leaking information connected with the mission Hikaru and Fuu were on…

He reached under the bed, to where his gun and shoulder-holster were taped to the frame. 

“I need you to come meet me. …Will you?” 

“I don’t do fieldwork!” He snapped, reflexively, though worryingly he was more irritated at the doubt in her voice. The protest won a startled laugh from Umi, one which almost cancelled out that hesitation when she asked if he would trust her – on the basis of a single phonecall and absolutely no information – to be her backup. Because of course he would. He yelled at her even more frequently than he lost his temper with most of the field agents, but he’d been in far too many scrapes with her to not trust her, and her instincts. 

She was the bluntest, most honest agent he knew… which was probably why she got into more trouble than most of the others put together. 

Umi hung up as soon as she’d given him a location, and he was out of his door and headed for the fire escape moments later, with only one phone, a few essentials – and the gun hidden under his oversized jacket. He had the feeling it might be needed. 

oOo

There was only so much Clef could do in a rush to blend into the crowds. Tonight he’d defaulted to a jacket with a hood he could pull up over the paleness of his hair; the erratic cloud-bursts of the rainy season gave it justification. It rained the whole time he was getting far enough from his place to risk catching a taxi – it was too late for the trains to be running, and the address Umi had given him was too far to walk in less than an hour and a half. If he left her alone that long, she’d have given in to boredom mixed with impatience and started without him. 

Whatever it was they were actually _doing._

He asked to go to an address a little way from the one Umi had given him, slurring his words slightly, leaving the taxi driver sure that he was a tourist with unreliable Japanese who had gone into a club to meet up with some friends. The last few blocks, he walked, carefully scanning the area for anything and anyone who looked out of place. There was nothing immediately obvious – but the back of his neck started to itch as he got close. 

He slipped into an empty alleyway behind the pub Umi had called him from, and announced it again – he felt it needed emphasis. “I don’t do fieldwork. I am retired from the field!” 

“That’s a subtle way of announcing yourself to strangers.” Umi smirked at him as she detached herself from the shadows. 

“If there was anyone else back here, you wouldn’t have let me get this far.” He glared at her. “I want to make it clear, I am here _under protest_ , and whatever chaos now occurs, it is not my fault.” 

“Oh, come on. You’d be bored to tears if you never got out of the office, I’m doing you a favour! You should be thanking me for adding some variety into your life.” 

“You shouldn’t even be out here!” He glared at her a moment more, but couldn’t hold the expression, not when Umi’s smirk had faded into something serious. “You’re certain, though? There’s a leak at HQ?” 

Umi nodded. “Oh, I’m sure. We’ve got a mole. I think there’s only one, probably, but given who it is I’m not _certain_ he’s working alone, and he’s trying to find out where Hikaru and Fuu have gone – he’s sending reports up to Sapporo. So _They_ know they’ve got people trying to infiltrate the organisation up there, but they don’t know _where_ yet – if we can’t stop him-“

“Who, Umi?” 

She hesitated, again. “Are you… Clef, are you certain you want to know? You could just help me with this, and then stay out of it – if there’s an investigation at work and you get dragged into it you know they’ll have to revoke access to HQ while it’s going on. I can find stuff to do outside, but you-“ 

“ _I_ am apparently so incapable of entertaining myself that you called me out here tonight in order for me to enjoy myself.” He asked her, voice dry. “I’m certain, Umi. If it’s someone higher in the organisation, you may need me to help put your case forward. And if it wasn’t someone like that – you would have rung Emeraude first. But if you aren’t sure you can reach her without the message being intercepted… I’m certain. I want to know.” 

Nodding, Umi bit her lip, then sighed. “It’s Innouva.” 

Clef’s mind stopped again for a long moment, and then started working overtime. Innouva wasn’t quite upper-management, but he was very, _very_ close to it for a field agent who had only transferred across to the Tokyo branch a year ago. A high-flyer, he’d thought – a _very_ high-flyer, he realised now. Something of a trapeze artist, in fact.

“He’s been passing on information through a computer setup in one of the offices two roads along. I can’t work out how to get at the system from outside, and the security system on the building is too good for me to break without it being noticeable. If you could do that – if you could get us in, and into the computers, we could send our friends in Sapporo some nice misinformation about Hikaru and Fuu. Say they’re looking at the Russian shipping links in Otaru, or something, turn their attention away. And then – we could set him up. Catch him looking for Hikaru and Fuu’s mission; maybe even find out if he has any other contacts in the organisation or if he’s a lone wolf.” 

“All we need to do is get into an office, and then into a computer?” 

“Yes!” 

“…That’s far too easy.” Clef pulled a face. “You always land in hot water, not lukewarm. Where’s the catch?” 

“There isn’t one!” She pouted at him. “It’s simple! It’s just – a really good security system?” 

oOo

‘Really good’ was something of an understatement. Half an hour later, Clef was kneeling on a narrow ledge seven stories up, soaked through with the rain which kept pausing just long enough for him to hope it had stopped before drenching him again, attempting to break through the only part of the alarm system which wasn’t impossibly well protected. Umi was sheltering under a decorative plinth at the end of the ledge, and he was concentrating hard on not looking down. “How did you even find out about this!?” He demanded, fingers tangled in a mass of wires, all precisely the same. “How, and why, did you have to find out about this _tonight_? You’re not cleared for fieldwork! Let alone balcony work!”

It was probably the third time he’d said as much in the last ten minutes – the rain wasn’t doing his mood any favours – and this time Umi growled instead of ignoring him. “I’m fine, I’m not going to melt! I’m not even planning on getting into any fights, and I can hardly do anything about the rain – it’s going to be raining for _months_. At least it’s not too hot yet.” 

The last half of that was too true to protest, so Clef circled back to the first part, which was a blatant lie. “You have three fractured ribs, Umi! That is not fine! If you’ve been running about the place doing surveillance on the rest of us just for practise again-“ 

“I was training!” Umi protested, pulling a face at him. “You’re the only person who objected.” 

“I’m the only person who _caught you_.” 

“I wasn’t prying into your private life, or anything.” She slumped back against the stone – just as the heavens opened once more, and Clef started swearing under his breath again, cycling through languages. “Not that you, you know, actually _have_ a private life. Anyway, I just – people keep sending me out of the office. Apparently I’m getting in the way, or something. I’ve been spending a lot of time in the coffee shop downstairs, and, well. Innouva was just _there_ too often for someone who wasn’t on assignment – and for someone supposedly organised enough not to forget his stuff and have to come back to HQ three times on the same day. I got suspicious. But I didn’t try following him until I was _certain_ there was something up. Not Innouva – he knows what he’s doing, it would have been too easy to get caught.” She grinned. “Though I was planning on telling him that I was bored and practising my technique if he caught me. You have to admit, having been caught at it once before makes it a much better coverstory.” 

“…I admit nothing.” Clef muttered. The main entrances to HQ, at least for agents, were through the dressing rooms of a whole row of clothing shops in central Tokyo – you walked in, admired something and took it to the changing rooms (if there were witnesses – you could just walk through, if not) and used the hidden doors to get through to reception. The whole row was actually owned and run by a dummy company that had been in place for years; they got a decent discount in any of them, and if clothes were ruined on a mission you could go pick your replacement instead of filling out reimbursement forms. It was one of the worst-kept secrets in the game, these days, as it was easy to spot when people started going shopping at the same place every week even if you weren’t in espionage. But it was tradition. HQ had been running that way since the 60s, and security was good enough no one had made it through reception in decades despite everyone knowing the entrance. 

There was one coffee shop at the centre of the row, which did very well out of its large regular clientele. From there, you could see most of the road… but you would have to be there a long time before you spotted something so slight as a co-worker coming back to the office more than usual. 

Clef turned his attention to the wires again. “Well, as you’ve so kindly decided to entertain me this evening, and have so much extra time, I guess I’ll have to find you some work to do once we get back and get this sorted out. You don’t need your ribs to do data-entry for me, after all. There’s even a spare desk in my office – if you get in my way, you’ll have to bring a cup of tea back for me, that should be long enough for me to not murder you. No lazing about in coffee shops on company time, you hear me?” 

“You-“ Umi blinked at his offer, and he wasn’t certain, for a moment, whether she was going to take it as a threat instead. He watched her reflection in the window between them – until she smiled. The small, sweet smile he glimpsed on occasion, and didn’t know what to do with. “Thank you, Clef. I’ll find some way to repay you. …For tonight, too.”

“You could always take me out someplace which _is_ actually fun, sometime.” 

He said it, realised what he’d said, and froze. Umi’s head shot up, and Clef couldn’t even go back to his work with the wires because his hands were shaking. 

“I… like things other than work.” Umi stopped, and he watched her reflection bite its lip. “ You realise if you ask me to take you somewhere – interesting. It might not be anything to do with – um, work?” 

Clef bit his lip, nodded, glanced at her, and then the two of them stared at each other as the rain faded back to the occasional drip. 

A moment, and then a scooter whined along the road below them, and they both drew back against the building. “After we’re done here.” Clef told her, voice a little stronger. “We save Hikaru and Fuu’s mission, we catch Innouva, and then – we can talk?” 

“Yes.” Umi grinned at him then, sharply. “Well, better hurry up then. If you don’t impress me now, I might decide we should go clubbing.” 

“…You would, too.” He laughed, quietly, and turned back to his work. 

oOo

Two hours later, they were three miles away, dripping wet, and both out of ammunition. Umi was clutching at her ribs and Clef had a new bandage about one leg. 

Their disinformation plan had worked well enough, and then things had gone rather… chaotic. But Innouva wasn’t going to be passing any more information to anyone, and there were several fewer criminals loose in Tokyo than there had been at the beginning of the night. If things went very well, the branch in Sapporo should believe that Innouva was caught because he was desperate to get that last urgent message out to them, which made it more likely they would believe it – at the very least, they didn’t know how Hikaru and Fuu were planning to get inside.

“That went well!” Umi said, brightly, as they waited for their lift back to HQ, and Emeraude, who was waiting for their explanation. 

Clef looked at her, then stared at the sky. “I _hate_ fieldwork.” He told the stars, invisible beyond the lights of Tokyo. 

Umi laughed – and then she stood up, stepped closer to where he leant against a wall, and kissed him softly on the cheek. “Thank you. For jumping into the hot water with me.” 

“…You’re welcome.” He said, and glanced about. Ferio was talking to the police, not far away, and had clearly seen the gesture, raising an eyebrow at Clef when their eyes met. Clef flushed – then glared back at Ferio, before turning to Umi again. 

She was looking away, biting her lip again, leant nonchalantly against the wall by his side in a way which let her press her hand to her ribs without making it too obvious. “Hey.” He said, quietly, and her head shot up in a way which was anything but casual. He watched her a moment more, still not quite certain… 

But Umi was watching him just as intently, and that had to be an answer of some kind. 

Clef leant in, and kissed her on the lips just as gently as she had his cheek. Only when he might have pulled away again, she leant further into the touch, and he ended up shifting closer instead. There was… a lot of potential, in that kiss. 

Still, Umi was in pain, he wasn’t much better, they had work to get back to; he broke away, with a fair amount of regret. “…You’d best be thinking of somewhere _exceptional_ for us to go,” he told her, unable to stop the silly-feeling grin spreading across his face. “That was quite some entertainment, tonight. You’ll have to work hard to impress me after all that.” 

“Oh, really?” Umi asked, grinning back at him. 

He nodded – and then held up a finger. “Just one rule. There shouldn’t be any guns involved in our next date. Okay?” 

Umi snickered, and buried her face against his shoulder, leaning into him. The warmth was very welcome; he wrapped his arm about her shoulders, and settled in to ignore Ferio until their lift arrived and he absolutely had to move.

oOo


End file.
